This is an interesting perspective, because in previous generations most of the long term fears were settled by simply doing nothing. They held their breath and it worked out.
The key difference is that the current generations are acutely aware that if we do nothing and just “stay calm and carry on”, we’re totally fucked. Inaction isn’t going to save us this time. We can’t put our heads in the sand and just sing ourselves to sleep then expect a good outcome when we resurface.
I think that’s a key differentiator. Previous generations were fearful of something happening. Current generations are fearful of nothing happening, because if nothing happens then the world will become uninhabitable by humans.
Yet, the majority of the decision-makers in our society are silent generation/boomers that drove to success by inaction and they’re largely doing nothing. We see this and understandably know how fucked we are.
You need to give articles making predictions about the future a heavy amount of doubt. We may be relatively intelligent as a species, but I genuinely think we way over-estimate our abilities. Predicting the future is hard. The biggest problem is that predictions are based on past data, and cannot account for what might happen that hasn’t happened before. Which when faced with a brand new problem tends to be a brand new response.
Look at our lives right now. While certainly not ideal (who could make that claim, in all history?) it’s pretty damn nice if you look back in time. Yes lotsa awful stuff MIGHT happen, but that’s always been true. And compared to the challenges of the past it’s not on any scale we haven’t been on before (I mean the Cold War literally could have resulted in the planet becoming uninhabitable due to nukes).
I’m not saying I disagree with you, I’m merely trying to give it a glass half full perspective. I agree some scale of societal collapse does seem like it is a real possibility, but it’s by no means guaranteed or necessarily even likely. We don’t know what we don’t know. Embrace not knowing what the future holds and just enjoy life for what it is today.
This is what gave me some peace: it could all end horribly for me at any minute. Anything could happen. I could get hit by a bus. I could die painfully from some fucked up disease. A fat asteroid could hit the earth. It’s all out of my control. Or things could turn out for the better, by some way I never foresaw. The best thing for us to do is to strive to be good people and care for what is in front of us.
I still find it a bit of a mindfuck that humanity is being such a deleterious effect on this beautiful world.
… and I do think that growing up under the threat of nuclear holocaust must have been similarly terrifying.
The bad is starting to look more and more like an impending global societal collapse with every passing day though
I mean, they literally thought WW1 and WW2 would start the apocalypse.
Nuclear armageddon was a daily fear of the Cold War, and almost happened several times.
The difference now is that we know all we need to do to ruin Earth for human life is to do nothing.
This is an interesting perspective, because in previous generations most of the long term fears were settled by simply doing nothing. They held their breath and it worked out.
The key difference is that the current generations are acutely aware that if we do nothing and just “stay calm and carry on”, we’re totally fucked. Inaction isn’t going to save us this time. We can’t put our heads in the sand and just sing ourselves to sleep then expect a good outcome when we resurface.
I think that’s a key differentiator. Previous generations were fearful of something happening. Current generations are fearful of nothing happening, because if nothing happens then the world will become uninhabitable by humans.
Yet, the majority of the decision-makers in our society are silent generation/boomers that drove to success by inaction and they’re largely doing nothing. We see this and understandably know how fucked we are.
You need to give articles making predictions about the future a heavy amount of doubt. We may be relatively intelligent as a species, but I genuinely think we way over-estimate our abilities. Predicting the future is hard. The biggest problem is that predictions are based on past data, and cannot account for what might happen that hasn’t happened before. Which when faced with a brand new problem tends to be a brand new response.
Look at our lives right now. While certainly not ideal (who could make that claim, in all history?) it’s pretty damn nice if you look back in time. Yes lotsa awful stuff MIGHT happen, but that’s always been true. And compared to the challenges of the past it’s not on any scale we haven’t been on before (I mean the Cold War literally could have resulted in the planet becoming uninhabitable due to nukes).
I’m not saying I disagree with you, I’m merely trying to give it a glass half full perspective. I agree some scale of societal collapse does seem like it is a real possibility, but it’s by no means guaranteed or necessarily even likely. We don’t know what we don’t know. Embrace not knowing what the future holds and just enjoy life for what it is today.
This is what gave me some peace: it could all end horribly for me at any minute. Anything could happen. I could get hit by a bus. I could die painfully from some fucked up disease. A fat asteroid could hit the earth. It’s all out of my control. Or things could turn out for the better, by some way I never foresaw. The best thing for us to do is to strive to be good people and care for what is in front of us.
I still find it a bit of a mindfuck that humanity is being such a deleterious effect on this beautiful world.
… and I do think that growing up under the threat of nuclear holocaust must have been similarly terrifying.